


Pull Me from the Dark

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: Skam Bingo [1]
Category: WTFock | Skam (Belgium)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Depression, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Heavy Angst, Humor, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Past Violence, Sander loves Robbe so much, Suicide Attempt, a criminal amount of references to david and goliath because i'm jewish and i do what i want, this ends on a hopeful note i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24782779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: “And now?” Sander says, in an echo of Robbe’s previous question. “Now how are you feeling?”Robbe stops to consider that. He’s happy, so terribly, immeasurably, frighteningly happy, with Sander’s voice and Sander’s arms and Sander’s smell and Sander’s love around him. But after the dust of their first kiss and their first vows of commitment settled around them, Robbe took a look at the space in which he floated and realized, somewhere along the line, that finding the love of your life doesn’t fix you.Because they’re not the stone in the sling that you draw back at the giant before you. They’re not the king that dressed you in armor too long and too weighty for your frame, that you had to cast aside and step out in the desert with your legs laid bare.No. But finding the love of your life can help you raise your arm when you never thought it possible, because they’re the battle cry that falls from your lips in the name of Jehovah.--Or: Sander discovers that Robbe has recently been prescribed antidepressants, and Robbe opens up to him about the night he almost stepped off the bridge. Only love will show how much they've grown and pull them through.
Relationships: Sander Driesen/Robbe IJzermans
Series: Skam Bingo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792492
Comments: 16
Kudos: 168





	Pull Me from the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> And I'm back at it again hurting our faves with more missing scenes because I desperately wanted to see a talk between Robbe and Sander about Robbe's depression. This is especially in reference to the clip where Robbe saw Sander kissing Britt and Noor confronted Robbe about being gay, after which there was a dark sequence that implied Robbe considering ending his life.
> 
> Trigger warning for the entire work in general for references to a suicide attempt and to the homophobic attack at the bar. If you are sensitive to this subject, then please turn back, because I love you all and I would rather you stay safe. <3 That being said, there is definitely a happy and hopeful ending to this, so there is comfort at the end of the hurt!
> 
> In response to the "Fear" and "Comfort" squares on my bingo card for [Skam Bingo](http://skamevents.tumblr.com). Also a fill for prompt #101 of [this tumblr prompt challenge](https://theoceanismyinkwell.tumblr.com/post/189721940158/drabble-challenge-1-150): "Don't be an asshole. Asshole."
> 
> Theme song and title inspiration: ["So Far" by Ólafur Arnalds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pECQK8ImFeQ)

**Vrijdag 17:13**

“Can we get Maredsous spread?”

“We just got Maredsous last month.”

“Yes.” Sander snaps the flyer in the air pretentiously. “Last month.”

“I swear you consume cheese like your life depended on it.” Robbe shakes his head, shoving the extra clove of garlic off the chopping board with the butt of his knife.

Behind him at the kitchen table, Sander’s eye-roll is near audible. “I’m Belgian. My life does depend on it.”

“Your _life_ ,” Robbe says with emphasis, half-craning his head to look at his boyfriend, “depends on making sure we don’t forget the tomatoes and shampoo this time around.”

“That was one time.”

“One time every single time we went to the store for the last two weeks.”

“Eh. To-may-to, to-mah-to.”

“Precisely what we’re talking about, Sander.”

Milan’s fluffy head pops round the corner of the kitchen, all midafternoon smiles and glowing eyes which is unfair considering that Robbe knows he just woke up from his pre-clubbing nap and should not be looking this effortlessly regal.

“Talking about what, boys?” Milan trills. He glides over to the table to join Sander, snagging a soda from the fridge on his way over.

“Sander’s shit memory,” Robbe says, chopping the parsley extra hard.

“It’s not my shit memory, it’s your shit handwriting,” Sander says with far too much serenity. “Seriously, just text me the list next time.”

“You know, he always does this,” says Robbe. He swivels on his heel to address the two at the table and gesture at the entirety of Sander’s seated person with his knife. “When we met, he absolutely would _not_ follow instructions at all and we got in so much trouble with Amber.”

“When you met?” Milan cocks his head, interest piqued. “Did you meet at a grocery store? That’s the most domestic gay nonsense I’ve ever heard.”

Sander side-eyes Robbe. Smirks and flashes him a wink. Robbe feigns a deep sigh, but the smile lines have already overtaken his countenance.

“Technically, we met at a spray painting party,” Sander says, “but you’re not supposed to know that.” He bites his lip and circles another abominable, over-expensive, totally unnecessary item in the flyer.

“A spray painting par-- _ahh_.” Milan nods with a crooked little smile of knowing to match.

“Yeah, and technically, I didn’t know you were there,” Robbe adds. “You little...stalker.”

Sander juts out his bottom lip at him in mockery.

“Ah, shit. The oil’s hot. Carry on, I gotta finish this.” Robbe swivels back around and hastens to get the rest of the onions prepped.

Milan prattles on with Sander, something about a friend of a friend who might be interested in a commission for her parents’ anniversary, send him a reminder later and he’ll forward him her Instagram handle--things like that, Robbe thinks, as he tunes in and out of the cozy chatter behind him. A few beats later, Milan gets up with a scrape of his chair on the linoleum, stretches loudly, and proclaims his exit to beautify himself for a wild night ahead.

“Stay safe!” Robbe yells at Milan’s retreating figure.

“ _The student is never above the guru_!” Milan singsongs back in English, and then he and Robbe erupt in giggles from opposite ends of the hallway.

“He’s chill,” Sander comments. He’s gotten up, too, and is puttering around the kitchen sink and drying off some of the morning’s plates with a clink of ceramic and a snap of their dish towel.

Robbe wrinkles his nose in unwilling fondness. “Trust me, if you really knew Milan, you would say he’s anything but chill.”

“Touché. He’s like you, then. Chill without an ounce of chill.”

“I can be chill,” Robbe rejoins quickly. The pan sizzles and he shakes it.

“Oh, really?”

“I can be _super_ chill.”

“ _Methinks the lady doth protests too much_ ,” Sander mutters in English.

“That’s not what you thought when we were ki--ow! Yow, fuck. Ouch. What the actual hell.” Robbe yelps at the slip of the blade over his knuckle, then proceeds to outright _shake_ it back and forth in the air as if it were a burn that would cool with the frantic movement.

“Babe. What. What’s going on? Are you--oh, shit.” Sander crowds him from behind, reaching with both hands for a better look at Robbe’s injury. “Shit, let’s get it washed, come on, over to the sink we go.”

“Turn off the fire first.”

“But--okay, fine.” Sander leaves him momentarily to click off the stove. When he crosses back over, Robbe is already running the tap water over his hand, staring in no less than morbid fascination at the streams of red that race down between the cracks in his skin.

“You do that,” says Sander, “and I’ll go--find--bandages or something--be right back…” He stumbles jerkily out the doorway, just narrowly missing bashing his shoulder against the lintel in his haste.

A couple minutes and clattering sounds later, Sander yells down the hallway, “Robbe, please tell me we have a first-aid kit.”

“I’m pretty sure we have one,” Robbe yells back. “Zoë’s all about that shit. Check the linen closet, maybe?”

“Already did. Nothing.”

“Check again, please. No--wait--actually, I’m an idiot. Check my bag. The older one, it’s hanging on the door from when we--” Deciding it’s too many instructions strung along to be hollering back and forth through an echoing apartment, Robbe shuts off the tap, tears off a strip of paper towel and pads down the hallway in the direction his boyfriend disappeared.

Robbe is just pushing open the door to his room when Sander yanks it back from the other side, rucksack in hand. There’s a weird flush high up on his cheeks, which is peculiar considering he is far less of a blusher between the two of them, and he is probably--definitely--not looking at Robbe in the eyes.

“Found it,” Sander mutters. He grabs Robbe without ceremony by the upper arm and hauls him to the ottoman in the living room. “Sit. Hand out.”

“So loving. Amazing bedside manners. Five stars,” Robbe murmurs, going for a joke to cover the stupid tremor in his voice. He’s not squeamish, not by a long shot, but he’s already been on edge lately and unable to sleep much from studying for exams, so it’s not inconceivable that a bit of blood might set him off this time around.

“There is tape and no scissors,” Sander complains. He’s hunched over on the couch opposite to him, Robbe’s hand flat on his knee. He still refuses to look up at Robbe for a solid minute.

Nonplussed, Robbe glances around for the source of the sudden shift of mood in the air. His gaze falls on the bag that Sander brought to the living room and dropped on the carpet. The second front pocket of the rucksack is unzipped, presumably because Sander was rooting around in it for the little plastic kit, and peeking out from the top is a white--

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Jesus, Robbe is an idiot.

“Sander,” he says softly. “Sander.”

“It’s none of my business. I’m--being stupid. Ignore me,” Sander pleads at his knees. With a couple of efficient tugs of the bandage, he gets the gauze wrapped twice around Robbe’s palm and taped more or less in place.

“It is your business. And I was--I was not _not_ gonna tell you,” says Robbe.

Well, that’s actually kind of sort of a lie. Robbe has a less than stellar relationship with the truth, as does Sander, and they’re both working on it, God, they’ve made tons of progress already, but the familiar brick weight is starting to settle over Robbe’s chest as he considers just how much of a setback this entire clusterfuck of a situation will be for their trust issues.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Sander insists. “You didn’t have to tell me. Again, just...ignore me. I’m overreacting.” He busies his hands with scooping up the rest of the supplies that have rolled into the crack between the couch cushions and arranging them into the plastic container. It snaps shut after a couple of tries with Sander’s shaking fingers.

Robbe curses himself. He wishes he could reach forward and take Sander’s hands and will the sudden fear away--smooth everything back and--start over--but something tells him he’ll have to use his words for this one.

His breath leaves him in a low huff. He bends and takes the rucksack into his lap, and pours out the little pill bottles onto the space of ottoman between his legs.

“She prescribed me sertraline for the depression,” he says after a pause. Flatly, matter-of-factly. “Clonidine for the--anxiety.”

Sander doesn’t say anything for a bit. Robbe dips his head, tilting it to the side, prompting his boyfriend to look up at him. The irony is not lost on him that so many times before, this was Sander’s role, goading him to make eye contact, to face the conversation head on and open his mouth and speak.

Sander rubs the middle of his palm with his fingers. Then he shifts, hesitates. Stands up. Shuffles over to plop down on the giant ottoman next to Robbe. Half of him is likely hanging over the edge of the seat, but Robbe is infinitely comforted by the gesture and wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Sertraline isn’t a bad choice. For...for the first time,” Sander says quietly.

Robbe hums.

“Have you been experiencing any weird side effects yet? The--weird headaches or dizziness or...whatever?”

Another huff, half-amused, escapes Robbe. “Actually. I haven’t started taking them yet.”

“Oh. Did she--did you get them yesterday? I thought your appointment was on Tuesday.”

“No, yes, it was. I picked them up on the same day.” Robbe leans forward on his knees and steeples a hand against his forehead. He shuts his eyes and swallows. “I got them, and I know I’m supposed to take them every day, but--”

He stops. The quiet stretches, a growing fog on the highway between them, and the uneven rhythm of breaths between the two boys rises and rustles like autumn leaves rushing past.

“But?” Sander prompts him. Gingerly he lays a hand against the space between Robbe’s shoulder blades and spreads out the pressure of his fingers across his skin.

“I’m not sure I need them,” Robbe says before he can help himself. And then, because he’s not only an idiot but also a masochist, and so, so young, a _boy_ , a stupid _boy_ , “Maybe--the therapy is enough. I could cope. She’s--okay to talk to. I’m not really sick, right? This can just be a...talk-it-out kind of thing. I don’t need to be popping pills.” 

The warmth of Sander’s hand on his back stills. Robbe bites his tongue. 

“Sorry, sorry--I--that was--” He punches the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. “God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, Sander, that was terrible of me.”

“You’re not… _sick_ ,” Sander says carefully. “But you need help.”

Robbe doesn’t know what to say to that. Not immediately. He leans back, relieving the pressure of his fists on his eyes, and lowers himself backward onto the ottoman. Sander doesn’t remove his hand from Robbe’s back until the last second, at which point he moves his touch to push his fingers through the tips of Robbe’s unruly curls.

Robbe turns his head to the side. He could plant a kiss on Sander’s jean-clad knee from this angle, from how close they are together. Instead he lifts a hand to trace the weathered line of stitches down the crinkle in Sander’s pants.

“Clinical depression,” Robbe says with a cautious lack of inflection to his voice. “That sounds pretty sick to me.”

A tiny smile ghosts over Sander’s face above him. “All right. If you say so.”

The trench of pain grows wider and more unspoken between them as the seconds stretch out. Robbe’s mind races in a whirl of self-deprecation, blame and guilt and desperation and useless fury. And the all-encompassing feeling of deadness beneath it all.

_I’m not sick. I can’t be sick. You’re the sick one between the two of us and I’m--I’m the one who can’t be, because--then--where would you be?_

_But._

_But._

_I’m not supposed to say that._

_Because I love you and I would sit at your side for minutes and hours and years if that’s what it takes for your head to get out of the rain_.

Sander thumbs over the gentle curve of Robbe’s left eyebrow, as if the tangle of his thoughts can be smoothed out that way. He seems to already know half of what’s going through Robbe’s head, because this is Sander, and this is _them_ , and they’re the next closest thing to fucking soulmates if ever such a wild concept could exist.

“I didn’t want to take my meds for the first month after they got prescribed to me,” Sander admits after a while.

Robbe’s head shifts up in surprise. The confession is not unexpected, exactly: it makes sense in its own lopsided way when he really thinks about it. But the fact that Sander would tell him, and in such a nearly sunny tone, five seconds away from a smile or a quip, it seems, is what floors Robbe.

“Yeah?” he asks. Voice cracking with a semblance of hope.

“Yeah. I wasn’t even in a manic episode at the time, which is...usually when my brain convinces me I’m cured of everything,” says Sander. “I was at rock bottom. The perfect moment to pop a pill, really, and to crave for everything to go away with medication.”

Robbe hums to let him know he’s listening.

“So...yeah. I felt the same way you did. I didn’t have to take anything--why did I have to take anything? Nothing was wrong with me. If I took the meds, then...it was like I’d lost. Like I gave up. Admitted that I’m fucked up.”

 _But you’re not fucked up_ , is Robbe’s knee-jerk reaction. He swallows it back. A lump lodges painfully in the back of his throat.

Because what bubbles to the surface immediately after that is the realization that yes, Sander feels him, Sander knows him, has been acquainted with the same kind of wide and petrifying expanse of failure before his eyes at the prospect of reaching out for help. He has stared down the same eyes of the beast that whispers: _You’re less. You’re messed up. You’re nothing without your mental illness and your little pills, now_.

“And now?” Robbe ventures to ask. “Now how do you feel about it?”

“Like I’m fucking David against Goliath every day, but those pills are the bunch of stones he picked up and chucked at his head.”

That’s...a more efficient metaphor for this entire psychological shitshow than anything else Robbe has heard in a long while. He wets his lips and tells Sander so.

That jerks a little snort from Sander. He ruffles Robbe’s hair, which would normally earn him a loud protest and a lopsided smile, but this time Robbe just curls further into Sander’s side on the ottoman and latches onto the inside of Sander’s knee.

“Can I ask you something?” says Sander.

“Mmhm.”

“With...the...depression.” Sander’s knuckles crack as he flexes his hand. “We never really...discussed it, I guess. When was--how--”

“How bad does it get?”

Sander cuts himself with a release of his breath and decides to give a nod of assent.

“Do you remember that party? The...one where you showed up with Britt--after the guys who jumped us and--um…”

“Yeah, I remember,” says Sander softly. Just the tiniest flavor of guilt still coloring his voice, because in so many words what Robbe really means is: the one where you kissed Britt even after everything we’d been through.

“Noor was there too. I didn’t--know she knew someone there, or actually, I _knew_ , I guess, it made total sense once she said it, but I was all up in my own head and everything was a shitshow and I just wanted to get wasted with Jens and...yeah.”

Sander runs a knuckle over the outline of Robbe’s nose. “What did she say?”

Robbe can recite it word for word, tone immaculately calm, head and heart a storm inside him. “‘No one cares if you’re gay. It’s 2019, get yourself out of the closet.’”

Silence descends as Sander audibly puts the pieces together in his head. And then a long, slow, pained little laugh.

“‘No one cares if you’re gay’,” he repeats in a whisper.

Robbe flashes a tight-jawed smile up at him in return.

“Robbe,” Sander says, and he speaks the name like a journey, an epiphany he is reluctant to make but has no choice but to uncover. “Robbe. _Robbe_.”

“Yeah,” is all Robbe can say now, because the words stick in his chest and all that consumes him once more is the hazy memory of the walk down the bridge and the climb up onto the railing over the lure of waves of sweet, gentle nothingness lapping below him.

No one cared if he was gay. No one that mattered, anyway.

Only his mother and his father and the God upstairs he liked to pretend still loved him. Only the faceless fuckers who tackled them to the pavement and drove their heels into his ribs, who rained down blows on his brow and his lungs. Who ran off with a patter, howling about the abomination that he and Sander were, and who echoed around the alleyways of a city that wouldn’t listen.

No one cared if he was gay. Only himself, the one person that decided if he lived or died.

“Robbe,” Sander says one more time, and this time there are unshed tears in his voice, because now he understands the width and the depth of the darkness Robbe was plowing through that night Sander closed his eyes and pressed himself against Britt because it was easier, easier, easier.

Robbe gives a minute shake of his head that rasps against the material of the ottoman. He could open his mouth now, he thinks, just push his tongue against his teeth and form the words with a mechanical breath and force the confession out, the same way he stared at the table with Jens’ eyes locked on him in the middle of a café and whispered: “ _It’s not a girl_.”

But the waves of indigo and the sibilant invitation of the river that night to shut off everything and give into a semblance of piece--familiar as they may be to Sander, _Sander_ , who understands like the other half of his goddamn soul--the memory of those waves is not Sander’s weight to bear.

Not in Robbe’s eyes.

So he swallows it back, and swallows again, and lets Sander fill in the gaps in the silence. He is sure that whatever Sander comes up with cannot be too far from the truth, anyway. Whatever the truth is for them these days.

Sander’s hand slides to the back of Robbe’s neck and presses slowly, gently. Eventually Robbe gives in and pushes himself up on his uninjured palm. Only a second passes before Sander gathers him up and folds him in against his chest.

The skin there is warm. Hot, even. Breath comes unevenly with the rise and spasm of Sander’s ribs behind the pilly black tee. Robbe buries his nose where chest meets armpit and breathes in, welcomes the scent that has always overwhelmed him but he wouldn’t have it any other way. The scent of too many spices, and old rain against city flagstones and hand-sharped charcoal and always, always the faintest smell of oil paint and musk.

Robbe breathes in, again and again, and he accepts the proximity for the apology that he knows it to be, and the arms around him for the infinite reassurance they both crave.

“Did you tell Elise about that night?” Sander asks quietly, chest rumbling under Robbe’s cheek.

“Yeah,” Robbe whispers back. “In as...many words as I could get out. Sort of.”

“Did she...was that the day…”

“Yeah,” Robbe says again. “That’s the day I got the prescription.”

“And now?” Sander says, in an echo of Robbe’s previous question. “Now how are you feeling?”

Robbe stops to consider that. He’s happy, so terribly, immeasurably, frighteningly happy, with Sander’s voice and Sander’s arms and Sander’s smell and Sander’s love around him. But after the dust of their first kiss and their first vows of commitment settled around them, Robbe took a look at the space in which he floated and realized, somewhere along the line, that finding the love of your life doesn’t fix you.

Because they’re not the stone in the sling that you draw back at the giant before you. They’re not the king that dressed you in armor too long and too weighty for your frame, that you had to cast aside and step out in the desert with your legs laid bare.

No. But finding the love of your life can help you raise your arm when you never thought it possible, because they’re the battle cry that falls from your lips in the name of Jehovah. 

“Now?” Robbe says. “Now I have...the bad days. Never as bad as that night, I think, but...they’re days I can’t ignore myself anymore.”

Sander understands. He understands completely.

“I think you should give Elise credit. She probably knows more about what you need than you know yourself.”

The words are flat, but spoken with a careful lilt, and Robbe knows he meant the best by it.

“I’ll take them, then,” Robbe says.

“And if it’s weird, you tell her. Straightaway,” Sander rushes to reassure him. “Don’t be scared.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t be scared, you hear me? Just tell her.”

“Okay.” Robbe’s nose suddenly stings. He leans back from Sander just a fraction to swat at his face. “God. Jesus. I’m supposed to be cooking the lasagna. Not turning you into urgent care, therapist and super-boyfriend, three-in-one.”

“Super-boyfriend?” Sander’s eyebrow twitches.

“Oh, so that’s what you pick up on, not the lasagna that is probably thawing the fuck out on the counter right now.”

“Super-boyfriend,” Sander sings back at him, brows wiggling mercilessly now, and he’s in a right proper mood now just like the day he serenaded Robbe with David Bowie.

“Super- _annoying_ ,” says Robbe with a roll of his eyes.

“Is that all you can come up with? Shit, Mr. Ijzermans, you’re off your game.”

“Don’t be an asshole. Asshole.”

“Laaame,” Sander declares, shoving at his shoulder. Robbe shoves him right back.

“I’m injured,” Robbe says petulantly. “ _Wounded_. Is this how you treat your patients, Dr. Driesen?”

Sander shoots him the widest, most shit-eating grin. “Only the ones who can’t even insult me right.”

Robbe shakes his head. “God. You’re insufferable. Negative _five_ fucking stars on Booking.”

“Oh, we’re in the negatives now, are we?”

As he teases Robbe, Sander throws his head back and laughs, and Robbe stares at him with a shaky and wholehearted devotion, having forgotten entirely to shoot a quip back. Because the overgrown fluff of silver hair flips back from Sander’s brow, and his entire body in all its warmth and curves and muscle is curved backward in the picture of mirth. Robbe runs his eyes over him, over his crooked front tooth and the freckles on his left cheek, over his Adam’s apple that wiggles underneath the tanned skin, over the glint of stormy eyes closed almost to slits. Over the lines around his mouth and eyes that spell of all the happiness that was robbed from him by youth but brought back to him by the presence of their togetherness. Here. Now. Always.

And Robbe reconsiders the little metaphor that Sander threw his way, and decides that he was wrong, because the love of his life is neither his stone nor his battle cry, but the embrace of home that awaits him as he scores his victory.

**Author's Note:**

> So I actually saw [this amazing Sobbe edit on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3LnOM0fgnc) with the same song, "So Far," using Sander's story to give life to the lyrics. I got inspired to take the flip side and see the song through Robbe's eyes, because to be honest, he really goes through stuff in season 3 of wtfock that he doesn't even tell Sander about onscreen. 
> 
> I'll probably write more Sobbe in the future from Sander's perspective as a nice challenge because I don't see it often. In the meantime...what do you think? This really started out as a drabble but quickly devolved into 4k because I just *had* to put my damn metaphors and parallelisms in. I'm super eager to know your feedback on the fic! :D
> 
> Thank you for coming by and reading!! Don't be shy to hmu on my socials to become pals <3 -kaleb
> 
> muh tumblr: theoceanismyinkwell  
> muh insta: kc.barrie
> 
> [my sobbe moodboard on pinterest](https://www.pinterest.com/kcbarrie/writing-moodboards/skam-sobbe/)


End file.
